Tag Archives: belly

Well, he was a man yesterday, too, but today is when it becomes official. As hard as it is to believe, my oldest little dude (who in no way can actually be considered little) turns 21 today.

I am, to put it bluntly, shocked. But only when I stop to think about it. And so I spend most of my time trying desperately not to think about said twopointone decades of parenthood that now stretches behind me.

Yikes.

Feeling the breeze blowing from the open burial pit laid out in front of me is a minor concern, though, when I call to mind the face of my oldest son, my namesake, the fifth of his name. . . Sarcasmo.*

When his mom-to-be and my wife, known to me then as She Who Must Be Sexy No Matter How Distended Is Her Belly Right Then, and I decided to bless the world with our progeny, we had no idea he’d not want to come out.

There we were, past 40 weeks and Sarcasmo-to-be seemed to have no intention of leaving where he was. Heck, he was comfortable, warm and fed where he was, so why go through the hassle of getting born?

Which meant we needed to do a little inducing so we packed up and headed to the hospital where the Motile Clone Gestation Unit was hooked up to various drug drips and monitors and we settled in to wait.

Despite a few contractions, it didn’t seem to be progressing. This being the dark ages, we couldn’t pull out a tablet and watch something good, so we had to make do with TV. Nothing good was on, so I got sent by the Motile Clone Gestation Unit to a nearby Blockbuster Video to rent a movie to watch. During labor.

Of course it was while I was at the video store that the doctors broke her water and the really painful contractions set in. I got a page (I told you it was in the dark ages) that consisted of the digitally written equivalent of “GET BACK HERE NOW! I WILL KILL YOU FOR LEAVING! GET BACK NOW! I WILL KILL YOU! I love you.”

Labor, amirite, dudes?

Even though we had a few exciting hours of contractions, eventually it leveled off and stalled. Sarcasmo-to-be really didn’t want to come out. So we were going to have to cut him out.

Dudes, let me tell you something important here. If you ever are in the operating room with your partner and child-to-be and the doctor offers for you to look over the curtain at the incision site. . . Don’t do it. Just. . . don’t.

And then the doctors told us that we had a baby boy. Our son. And placed the tiny human in our arms and I realized just exactly what real love felt like. I understood why my parents put up with my guff for all those years.

I looked into his face and understood the purpose of the universe had been to bring us all there. To that hospital. In that room. At that time. To bring into existence the reason for it all.

I met my son and all other concerns fell away.

With Sarcasmo, I learned how to be a parent. He taught me how to be a dad. How to be friendly, but still retain the authority to speak and be listened to. Even more important, he also taught me how to listen.

He was my first little dude to smile, to talk, to crawl and walk. To eat on his own. He was the first to be embarrassed by the sniffling dad in the back of the kindergarten classroom who just did not want to leave and might have had to be escorted from the room by the teacher’s helper.**

But even better than all the tiny-human firsts is the current first. He’s the first of my little dudes that I can watch become a man. He’s out on his own now, making decisions (for good and for ill) and beginning his own life, one only tangentially related to mine.

It’s hard — darn hard — to let go of the wheel that directs his life. But it’s something I’m learning from him even now.

He’s got the tools he needs to succeed and is one of the smartest people I’ve ever known. And I say that as a person, not necessarily as a dad. And one of the thickest and fastest-growing beards it’s ever been my frightened privilege to watch grow.

The years between the dawn of his first night as a tiny human on the outside (when I held him up to the rising sun, proclaimed him my heir and listened to the roar of the animals***) and now have not always been easy ones. There have been times when I haven’t wanted to hear his voice and many more when, I’m sure, he thought the one thing in which I would look best would be a shallow grave.

And, yet, through all that. . . Through the screaming and the yelling. . . Through the tears and the smiles. . . I have always loved the big dude and always will.

Sarcasmo is an amazing young dude with so much promise to fulfill as he walks out into the world as a man. I’m so glad I get to be there as it happens.

Footnotes & Errata

* NO! That’s not his real name, d’uh! He’s Richard Edward Jones V, where the V stands for Roman Numeral Five, not Violet. At least as far as he knows.
** Might have. The important word in that sentence is might.
*** Although I’m not sure why there was a big orangutan there. Or animals, really. It was an. . . odd dawn. I might have been a bit punchy.

What is it about pregnant women that makes most of us feel like we have the right to just come up to them and start rubbing on their bellies?

No, seriously.

I saw something like that the other day and it got me started thinking about it. I was in the library when a very, very pregnant woman came inside near where I was sitting. She greeted another woman, but you could tell from their stances that they weren’t actually close friends. There was a definite, visible reserve there.

The non-pregnant woman then pulled her youngish dude (maybe six or seven years old) over to them and just thrust his hand onto the pregnant lady’s belly. She was shocked. Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open a bit, but the non-pregnant mom and her son were completely oblivious to the pregnant woman’s distress. They then said good-bye and moved on.

The pregnant woman just stood there for a little while before shaking her head and moving on.

From experience, being around a pregnant woman for a long, long time on three separate occasions, I’ve seen this happen again and again. People would walk up to She Who Must Be Given Her Space and, with the barest of pauses to get any kind of permission, start fondling her belly.

Is a pregnant woman’s belly community property or something?

I really don’t think so. But there’s something in our culture that says pregnant women get to endure this unique form of annoyance.

I know it’s a wonderful thing, a wanted pregnancy that’s going to produce a wanted, loved child. Many pregnant woman do have almost a glow about them from their healthy bodies and their excitement about the growing life (when they’re not suffering from hemorrhoids or swollen ankles) and most people do want to share in that kind of joy. It makes us feel good.

But, seriously, dudes and (mostly) dudettes. Don’t just automatically assume that a pregnant woman wants you to feel up her belly, just because she’s showing. And if you just can’t help yourself, ask for permission first and actually — I know this is a bit out there, but go with me here on this one — wait for permission before you get all touchy feely.

I know I’m not talking to the dudes out there all that much on this one, because we’ve been pretty much conditioned against just randomly touching people we meet in the street. Still, I’d like to see a little thought here, folks. It actually is her pregnancy, not ours.

Eyes blinded by the scouring soil, it’s sharp claws stab into the unforgiving belly of earth stretched out before it.

Slowly, painstakingly, the creature moves ever-closer to the bright and warm above it, seeking sustenance, the warm ichor and crunchy chitin of its prey.

It cannot be stopped, this invader, and it leaves behind a trap for the unwary, for the unobservant among us. Humans, too, fall victim to this hideous . . . Invader from beneath!

To, to sum up, what’s up with all the moles around Charlotte these days?

No, seriously.

It’s really starting to get on my nerves. At first, I thought it only was something that was happening in my yard. Whenever I’d walk outside, I’d sink ankle deep in the mole tracks that seemed to cris-cross everywhere underneath the rapidly fading grass in the front yard.

I still remember the visceral thrill I got when, upon exiting the house one morning to walk Buzz, the garbage disposal that walks like a dog, and saw the leading edge of a mole trail and it was. . . twitching! I’m not proud of what happened next.

I jumped up and down on that thing like I was trying to win a weasel stomping contest. (Weird Al joke there) On that same walk, Buzz and I came across a mole above ground. Yeah, that dark blur top left is the walking garbage disposal.

After I calmed down, I went out and purchased a sonic stake that I drove into the ground and let send out pulses of ultrasound to drive away the moles. It worked.

But what about the rest of the city?

It seems everywhere I go, if I step on the grass, my feet start sinking into the freshly turned earth, left behind by the moles as they crawl through the ground, searching out insects and tasty roots to slake their eternal, appalling hunger.

Seriously, where are they all coming from? Is this something that’s happening everywhere or only in Charlotte? Or only here in south Charlotte, where I live?

I’m thinking it has something to do with human-caused catastrophic global climate change. With warmer winters, the bugs and such in the soil don’t die off and that leaves even more food for the moles.

These things need to be eradicated. They are horrors from the underworld, climbing toward the air and the light, and they must be destroyed!